All hell breaks loose.

Seems his name flashed on the computer and he was grilled.

SRK is peeved.

Indians are irate – globally.

The blogworld, media, phone-lines, twitter have all helped the news travel back and forth and are continuing to do so as we speak.

Hold on. For a moment.

The issue is NOT that a film-star was detained for 66 WHOLE minutes because his name is Khan.

The issue is NOT that this comes right after our ex-president was frisked by a US airline in our own country prior to boarding a Newark bound flight.

I don’t think we are angry that the Americans had the gall to frisk/search men of fame or stature from our nation.

We are angry that WE don’t have the gall to do the same.

We come from a nation where people love to please anyone who seems to be ‘connected.”

We fawn over celebs of ANY kind.

Our stars get escorted past the security check.

We have seen celebs get picked up in separate cars once they get off an aircraft.

We have seen VIPs hold flights because they themselves are running late.

I mean – we love all this.

It’s ingrained in us.

APJ Abdul Kalam – one of the most respected Indians alive, cheerfully underwent a frisking.

Maybe that’s the way he is – humble.

Or maybe he strongly believed there is nothing wrong in being frisked prior to boarding a flight – especially if the person before him was frisked, and the person after him will be.

What is SRK peeved about?

That he, Shah Rukh Khan, was not recognized – and detained for 66 mins without being allowed to make a call?

Or that he, a Khan, was detained indiscriminately?

If it is the former, it is not worth a rethink.
From America’s security perspective, being Shah Rukh Khan does not make you any less or more privileged than any other visitor from another country – especially at the immigration desk.

If it is the latter, it is sad.
The computers in Newark could do with a little reprogramming – so they don’t simply stop anyone with a particular surname – I am sure a more detailed and deeper profiling of suspects can be done.

Imagine all the Mehtas in the world being stopped at the security check because Harshad Mehta scammed and ran.

Remember the law? It professes equality.

Every individual, be it the richest person in the world or Ram Singh Ojha from the dingiest part of India, has to stand up when the Judge walks into the court.

Why should it be any different when it comes to security?

The Mumbai attacks taught us (or have they?) that we MUST cheerfully volunteer to be checked when walking into a mall or a theatre or any other public place.

It is for our own good.

If we feel insulted, it is because of our own bloated egos.

I have heard, and I am sure so have you, of friends and colleagues going through an inordinately long security check because of the country we come from.

Nobody argued about that.

It comes with being an ordinary Indian citizen travelling abroad.

Well, SRK is an ordinary Indian citizen travelling abroad.

He pays taxes at the same rate as many others do and he too needs a license to drive.

So he will be treated the same way you or I will be.

Sure we may fancy treating celebs, big-shots and politicians with kid gloves even when it comes to national security.

Why are we expecting the US to tow the same line?

Before cursing the US, shouldn’t we do a little soul searching here at home?

Why the hell can’t we search/frisk/strip search anyone coming into our OWN country if required?

You know why we are searched like this when we go abroad?

Possibly because no one trust us with our own security – that’s why.

We are world famous for allowing our own rich, powerful & famous to bend rules at the drop of a hat.

And that goes a long way in building our own reputation as a strict nation the world over.

Shah Rukh, being who he is, could call Rajeev Shukla and get help.

Most Indians, in his place, wouldn’t know who to call beyond their dads or spouses.

So quit all this shouting.

Till such time we can’t enforce security measures on our own ‘privileged class’ and till such time we can’t enforce them on ‘privileged visitors’, we should quit wasting our breath over Shah Rukh – never mind how much we love him.

All this brouhaha over his 66 min/2hour long detention is such a waste of precious airtime, amongst other things.

That kind of time, if you ask me, is better spent telling people how to handle the Swine Flu.

We are free.

Yes, we became free when we drove the British out.

But today?

Today we are more free.

I say so with such confidence because I have witnessed it.

I was in Navi Mumbai today and an urgent purchase demanded that I visit a nearby mall.

Mall.

That word, in the time of the Swine, is scary.

I mean schools have been shut.

Multiplexes have been closed down.

This was a mall.

A big mall.

I ventured in, hoping the Swine Scare would have kept the crowds away.

Freedom, it is said, in its purest & highest form, frees one of fear.

And Navi Mumbai, I discovered, has attained it.

This was no mall.

This was Animall.

It made ‘chock-a-block full’ seem a gross understatement.

Scores of people, in varying degrees of masking, rubbed shoulder, hip, toe and posterior.

Yes, varying degrees of masking.

You see, only handful actually wore masks (including the guards outside the mall).

The rest could be broadly categorized as :

1. Nothing-before-Nose, hence 100% Swine friendly
2. Hand-before-Nose, hence 99.99999% Swine friendly
3. Offer-leaflet-before-Nose, hence 99.999998% Swine friendly
4. Handkerchief-before-Nose, hence 99.99997% Swine friendly

Interestingly, the mall staff could be seen taking no precautions whatsoever:

I was directed to the Big Bazaar inside the mall premises.

Horrors awaited me.

Which Swine can, even in its wildest dreams, hope to overshadow a Big Bazaar Independence Day Sale?

Dirty, stinking, trampled-upon-veggie-adorned-floors.

Musky, sweat-heavy air.

50% off on towels.

Two tissue boxes for the price of one.

Three mops for the price of two.

Toilet cleaner for 7 whole rupees less.

Rubber-wood furniture at unbelievably low prices.

And hundreds of sale-crazed trolley-pushing bipeds – pushing, shoving, struggling, demanding, arguing, grabbing, tossing, stuffing, coughing, huffing, puffing.

Animall.

Animall.

Animall.

Forget the air. No Swine could risk lurking in the remotest corner of this battlefield.

I ran – as fast as possible.

Down the escalator and out of the building.

As we drove back home, I thought.

Let hospitals struggle with sniffling queues.

Let kids be quarantined at the first sneeze.

Let health departments bow down to sheer fear of an epidemic.

But this?

This was true freedom.

The supreme spirit of human consumerism conquered the Swine.

Trampled it.

Ran it over.

Crushed it.

Animall – 1. Swine – 0.

“Sorry about the twuckup,” I wrote.

It wasn’t deliberate. It just happened.

Which led me to ponder over Twitter‘s growing influence on the written word, barely years after text messaging shortened the English language.

And I found a variety of new terms that have sprung up as tweeting becomes popular.

Some are minor variations of the original English word.

Some are interestingly coined.

I wonder when these terms will begin to travel outside Twitter and start becoming part of our vocabulary?

Here are a few that I have compiled from a few sites I visited.

Actwivist
One who uses Twitter messages to advocate/oppose a political, social or environmental cause.

Attwaction
A crush on a fellow twitterer.

Dweet
A tweet made under the influence of alcohol.

Illtwitterate
The uninitiated. (You should be knowing this!)

Omnipotwit
An all knowing, all powerful deity on Twitter.

Puntwit
An authority on Twitter. May or may not enjoy such status outside of Twitter.

Regurg-a-tweet
The act of re-tweeting a tweet that someone originally tweeted about you.

Twaddict
One addicted to Twitter.

Twamous
Famous on Twitter.

Twyber Sex
Need I explain?

Twottie
A hot woman on Twitter.

Twawkward
Being awkward on Twitter.

Tweep
Weep on Twitter.

Tweetheart
Twitter + Sweetheart

Tweetup
Twitter + meet-up: a gathering of folks based on a twitter conversation.

Twesaurus
A list of synonyms for terms found in the Twictionary.

Twitterrhea
A high volume, unpleasant and occasionally messy blast of tweets. Can be contagious.

Twypo
A typo on Twitter

AND HERE IS MY CONTRIBUTION

Twickie
An short but intense exchange of lusty tweets with a Twottie.

Twemble
What you do when your wife discovers the Twickie.

Tweet-talk
What you try desperately to make your wife believe it was all very innocent.

Twivorce
What your wife responds with to your above antics.

Tweep

Yup. That’s all you can do for the rest of your Twitterlife.

________________________________

BTW. Feel free to add to the list.

Cheers

My blog posts are part of Social Media.

Pictures that you put up on Flickr contribute to Social Media.

Comments posted by readers on this blog and the discussions that happen between them via these comments are also content.

All this content becomes part of Social Media.

Everything Internet and mobile users post, upload, share – it all goes into creating Social Media.

Why is this a concern for brands?

Well, for a long while brands spoke to people.

In the hope they will listen, feel and do, as brands wanted them to.

Life has moved on since.

People don’t listen as much anymore.

They talk. They opine. They influence.

Increasingly they create Social Media in this process.

It’s not that people never did this earlier.

It’s just that it has become ridiculously easy for them to do so now.

So if they like or dislike ‘anything’, they can discuss it ‘anywhere’.

Like on the comment section of this blog.

And today, that ‘anything’ can easily be a brand.

Tables turned.

So now, instead of talking to people, brands need to talk with them.

Conversations – as the lingo goes.

That should be easy, no?

There is just one problem.

Who on earth wants to converse with a brand?

The last time, eons back, a representative of a washing powder company wanted to converse with me, I sent my house-help out to tell him I wasn’t at home.

It hasn’t changed since then, at least for me.

So how does a brand converse with people who are more vocal, more opinioned and less interested in ‘conversing’ with them.

By ‘enabling’ Social Media?

Suppose I use an Internet messenger to chat with my friend.

The last thing I want is a telecom brand to barge in with offers, information or questions in the middle of my chat.

But if that Internet messenger itself comes courtesy that telecom brand, I don’t mind.

Maybe I’ll even like it.

Yes, it is an extremely basic example.

But I think the principle works.

I don’t want Facebook to be overrun by brands.

I don’t want to receive tweets from my favorite jean manufacturer.

I hate every promotional text message I get.

I hate every mass mailer that hits my inbox.

Hell, I even delete weekly updates from news sites that I myself signed up for.

How have brands reacted to the new me?

To begin with, they all have websites.

They are gunning for Twitter accounts.

They are starting ‘fan’ pages on social networking sites.

I see their banner and text ads when I access my Internet mail.

Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera.

Do these really draw me?

Honestly, no.

What draws me?

Websites are useful – if I am seeking the information they provide.

Like news, tariff plans, handset details, vacation locales, software updates and downloadable e-papers.

Or if the tools they hand out actually help me.

Like downloadable apps, music, e-books, loan calculators, travel planners, mutual fund performance charts.

I like it when brands tell me something I didn’t know, or offer something useful.

Not when they want to sell me their history or their offers.

Especially in the middle of a conversation I am having with someone else.

As my blogger friend lsbhat pointed out via email:

Brands need to find ways of being useful.

It’s not about being ‘Viral.’

There is a huge element of ‘voluntary’ activity when it comes to the web.

You can’t ‘create’ a viral, force me to ‘view’ it and ‘pass’ it on to everyone in my contact list.

He cites the example of Eco Drive by Fiat.

A great example of being useful to the consumer and making him/her turn to the brand voluntarily.

Indeed, brands need to react differently to the Social Media Revolution.

Brands need to be CAUTIOUS.

The web, as a medium, can be as punishing for a brand as it can be rewarding.

Example?

Today we are seeing aggregation of social media reactions in the same place.

Assume I blog my criticism of the way an airline handled my baggage.

Someone links to this post.

I comment on another post on the same topic.

Someone else comments on the same with his or her own experience.

Someone starts a complaint page on the web.

Now here’s the twist.

There are tools that will collect all conversations linked to my post across different social media platforms and collate the same beneath my post.

That means I don’t need to do much at all.

All the criticism automatically gets added to mine and collects in one single place.

Echo from JS-Kit, expected to roll out any day, is a striking example.

So if the airline was hoping I was a solo voice, it needs to think again.

The nature of Social Media demands that brands be far more cautious, wary, smart and willing to learn the new rules of engagement.

It is no longer the case of a single consumer looking at a TV set.

It is no longer a single voice over the toll-free complaint line.

Go deal with that.